The Phantom Link

By Timothy J. Burger and John F. Dickerson

Two years after the Twin Towers fell, nearly 7 in 10 Americans remain convinced that Saddam Hussein played a part in the Sept. 11 attacks--despite the fact that no evidence has been found of such a role. Critics of the Bush Administration charge that the President and his top advisers waged a subtle campaign of insinuation in trying to make the case for war by frequently mentioning Sept. 11 and Saddam in the same breath--while carefully acknowledging, when pressed, that there was no specific link between the two. Critics had another reason to howl last week when Vice President Dick Cheney, appearing on Meet the Press, muddied the waters yet again. Cheney said that although two years ago he said there was no link between Saddam and Sept. 11, new evidence about Saddam's links to al-Qaeda has led him to update his position: "We don't know" if Saddam was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. That prompted a quick response from Administration brass to reiterate the official White House line. "We've had no evidence," said Bush, "that Saddam Hussein was involved with Sept. 11." Administration officials insisted, however, that Cheney had not strayed from the official script but was merely restating the more general point that Saddam had al-Qaeda ties.

Even that assertion has become a source of tension on the House Intelligence Committee, which is probing the handling of prewar intelligence on Iraq. At a closed hearing last week, a knowledgeable source tells TIME, Democrat Silvestre Reyes read into the record a secret memo he sent Republican chairman Porter Goss more than a month before the war. Reyes (who, through an aide, declined comment) raised concerns that intelligence agencies may have misled the panel by suddenly touting links between Iraq and al-Qaeda. Reyes told the panel that in closed-door testimony over the previous year, intelligence witnesses, when asked if there was any evidence of such links, had consistently said there was "none, or very little if we stretch it." --By Timothy J. Burger and John F. Dickerson